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Rift Backpedal

I’m pretty sure my first look at Rift was curious interest. My next few looks became somewhat skeptical and doubtful. When some of my P&P group went ahead and ordered it (despite another one suggesting it was, “meh”, I didn’t order it and held off instead. When the folks at my work mentioned it, I hastily declined.

And that point of view hasn’t changed.

My buds are wishing they could cancel their pre-order but they can’t because they ordered directly from Trion. They’ve decided to just suck it up, play for the month and not renew (I think one signed up for three months?). That and hope it becomes more enjoyable for them over the next few betas.

Why do they dislike it?

Well, they say it’s basically WoW with better graphics. One of them has never played WoW and the other only played up to near max level in TBC (though he admitted it was ‘good’ overall, he just wanted more … depth?).

Apparently there are a lot of people trying to cancel pre-orders. Good sign?

I can’t be too proud, I picked up DCUO and prolly will cancel it in a month or so. It’s fun, I just don’t have the time for it now and the kids don’t seem all that interested in it.

I have no intention of cancelling my pre-order even if offered. I’ll play the time I bought. If nothing else, it will be a mildly amusing break from EVE.

What hangs in the balance for me is “will the game be interesting enough to sink a lot of time in” versus “can I make it most of the way through in 90 days.” If the game is interesting enough, I’ll play after that. If it’s like World of Warcraft, I won’t. I had fun in my 90 days of WoW… I made level 68… but I did it almost exclusively solo, which kind of defeated the purpose of the “MM” part of an MMO. Rift, I suspect, is going to go down that same path.

As always, i’m done with a game when I have to start a boring raid grind. How long that takes depends on how much content is in the game. I’m also not interested in PVP to any serious degree. I have EVE and first-person shooters for that.

You had asked me once what I thought the “next gen” game would be. Well, a next gen game would seem to have to do away with the “level up” construct. If, as it seems, the “real game” begins when the raiding starts, then the levelling up is a total waste of time for the players and resources for the devs. I won’t play a game that’s raiding-only, but that’s what it seems a lot of people actually want.

To be fair in your text, there was only base WoW and TBC when I played. But your assessment is correct. I thought it lacked depth and the idea that I could solo all the way to within sight of max level (I probably could have solo’d to max level if I had another 10 days, but my 90 days ran out) was disappointing. People only grouped for raiding, so for all practical purposes, it was a solo game.

Since the game at max level is raid and pvp, and I already was playing EVE and Unreal Tournament, I lost interest rapidly.

In the absence of levels, some other metric will pop up otherwise the RPG element will cease and you’ll basically have a characters like FPS characters.

In RPG systems that do not have level, some sort of progression exists, be it through skills being easier to use or more practice in some mechanic garnering a higher rating. That rating will suddenly become the barrier for which people are measured.

For example, when everyone rushed to the level cap in WoW, you can then dismiss levels because everyone is the same level. What then do you use to measure them? And they do get measured. It was item level (an addon would get a sum of these and create a rating) or even achievements (suggesting you’d done it before).

That said, maybe a MMO will make challenging and entertaining leveling, but also offer the ability to jump to max level and raid for those that want that. Guild Wars did that for PVP. You could level through to level 20 in PVE or create a level 20 character and jump right into PVP.

Who knows.

MMOs have evolved from requiring others to play into being something you can play with lots of other people around. You now have the choice between solo, grouping or raiding.

You could group up in WoW, in fact, the Dungeon Finder tool actually encourages using dungeons as a means of leveling – dungeons which you need a group for.

Yes, you *could* group in WoW… and in 3 months of using the tools available, I ended up in precisely 3 groups ever, totally approximately 5 hours of play.

EVE is and isn’t a group-requiring game.

For PvE…
It is in that you can work your way to very hard missions with a skill set that lacks the abilities to complete those missions. You effectively have to group or not do that level of content.

However, even if you do have the skills and could solo the missions, it tends to be much more efficient to have at least a small group. If I’m flying a battleship, all the annoying little high-speed enemy frigates are a real pain in the arse to kill off. If I group with a frigate or destroyer pilot, he can take out the little stuff while I concentrate on the big cruisers and battleships. The mission gets done faster with a less costly repair bill at the end.

So while not absolutely necessary, it’s really handy.

There’s also player-generated content (courier contracts) that are specifically solo, although to complete them you may need a group of your own friends in order to survive the trip.

For PvP…
Attempting to PvP solo is basically suicide. Even if you nail someone, they’re going to be really pissed and probably come back with a whole navy of friends and what amounts to a licence to kill you. It’ll be easy to convince a few friends to off a single guy brazenly PvPing, esp. if the PvP guy has a cool ship that would make good salvage.

If you PvP as a group, they still get the licence to kill you, but it’s harder for 1 person to convince half a dozen friends that they should all risk expensive ships to avenge a death.

So in effect, the game is about 75% solo in PvE and about 5% solo in PvP.

We actually did what amounts to a PvE small tonight. Works like any MMO raid… 8 of us form up. Me and someone else with battleships warp onto the site to pull aggro. Then my other character and the rest of the cruisers show up to cut the enemies down.

Soloing PVE in WoW is limited to outdoor content or zones you out level by a pretty fair margin – and not all classes have as easy a time at it. That includes soloing – you have to play the classes a little differently. Warlocks and other pet classes are the easiest to level.

I won’t lie, it’s easy to level in WoW, even more so if you’ve played a MMO before. They’ve streamlined the questing to make it less obscure and a fair bit more leading. The game isn’t about leveling as much as it was previously, so I suspect that loses interest for people that want that to be the focus or difficult aspect of the game.

Unfortunately (for you, Scott and others that want tougher leveling), given the number of WoW subscribers, those people are in the minority.

The newer dungeons are definitely more complicated and difficult which has the community screaming over it. I don’t mind it so much, but I’m spoiled with having guild groups 98% of the time. Heroics were vicious (same dungeons on steroids) even with a gripped guild group, I can only imagine how bad it was with non-guildies.

PVPing solo is a sure way to get killed in WoW as well… unless you’re beating on lowbie areas.

The way they make solo PVP possible is through Battlegrounds. You join a team and do varied games like CTF or capture and hold type stuff – you’re not solo and if you try to be, you’ll likely get rolled.

That said, the group game consists of dungeons (heroics) and raids.

What you’re describing is no different other than that you’re in ships instead of driving a character around.

The main difference is the loss or expense of dying.

I previously was quite interested in Rift but then heard more and more about Rift, thought about it in depth, looked at the long view and dropped it.